


The Sound of Anger is Silence (Part 1)

by dem_hips



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-07
Updated: 2010-01-07
Packaged: 2017-12-12 01:53:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dem_hips/pseuds/dem_hips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the first part to a very ambitious plan to write darkfic about the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War.  I never continued with it, but the first part stands pretty well on its own, I think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Anger is Silence (Part 1)

July 3, 1866 – Königgrätz

Austria didn’t usually take a place on the battlefield beside his commanders.  Normally he’d be content to see them and his people off; his place was in the background, on the sidelines, aiding as much as he could with strategy and support.  And in ages past, his soldiers would return to him from the field, and he would be waiting for them, with an anthem to sing of their victories or a requiem to lay their fallen to their final rest.

This time was different.  This time, he stood with his people, though out of the way of their eventual charge, awaiting the signal with them, hearing the words of their murmured prayers mingling with the sound of his own, strange and wordless and flowing with harmonious reverence, as it echoed in his head.  Fingers more attuned to holding a bow or running along eighty-eight ebony and ivory keys now held uncomfortably onto a weapon of his own—a rifle, like his men—which was strange and foreign in his hand.

Today was certainly different.  Today, just off to the side of his own troops as he was, was Prussia, facing him with that awful smirk Austria had been seeing in his nightmares lately.  On paper, the battle was flawless; they had the numbers and the field advantage, and their weapons had superior range.  But what was written on paper was only the outline of what was to come, he knew.  In music as well as in battle, the plans drawn up in advance had to leave plenty of room for error and improvisations.

\---

Not too long after the battle itself had begun, the morning’s rain had petered off into a damp fog that hung over the combatants, obscuring them occasionally from view.  Prussia himself had entered the fray, and Austria would catch glimpses of him as Prussia moved, preparing his own needle gun and then firing, taking out several of Austria’s men before he needed to reload.  The battle had been going on for a couple of hours, now, and that higher rate of fire from the Prussian arms was beginning to turn the battle in their favor.  Finally, Austria could no longer stand back behind the brave lines of his men fighting for their country.  He began striding over to where he had last seen Prussia’s form, fingers clenching the rifle in his hands and nerves as taut as a bowstring.  But his face remained impassive, as always.

Prussia almost seemed to sense his approach, and everything happened too fast.  One moment Austria was headed towards an empty stretch of fog, and the next, the sharp red of his opponent’s eyes was too close, too close, and a sharp, piercing pain made its home in his abdomen, nestled somewhere in the vicinity of his ribs.  He staggered and fell back onto the muddy ground on one knee, the weapon he barely knew how to use hanging loosely from the fingers of one hand, while the other clutched at the previously impeccable white cloth against his abdomen, newly soaked with blood.  Prussia watched with a wide, wild grin as his adversary turned his bespectacled face to look up at him through rain-spattered lenses.  How long had he waited to see this?  It was all just too great, just too _much_ …!

“Done already, Little Master?” he sneered, knowing the epithet grated on Austria’s nerves, though the annoyance rarely broke through his calm demeanor as much as it did right at that moment.  If anything, it made Prussia’s grin wider, even more carnal.  “Don’t give up just yet, my dear sir,” he warned, his tone making a mockery of Austria’s characteristic politeness. “Not when there are others who wish to join us.”

“What…are you talking about?” Austria managed to gasp out.  He thought he was keeping his face somewhat calm, given the circumstances, but he felt a cold chill course through him at Prussia’s next words.

“Hey Romano, Veneziano, didn’t you have something to say to our dear young master?”

Austria glanced up just the slightest bit, and he watched over the rims of his glasses as the Italy twins strode forward.  Twins, but they could not have been much more different, he thought vaguely.  Their upbringing had seen to that.

“This again,” he murmured, once they had come to stand by Prussia.  Before him, above him, the older one scowled darkly, while the younger attempted to copy him and succeeded only in making a face that Austria generally attributed to a listener of particularly bad opera.

“We’ve told you before, and we’ll tell you again: Feliciano and I _will_ be reunited,” the elder twin snapped, his foul nature apparent in the rough way he handled his vowels.

“Italy,” Austria interrupted, turning towards his former charge. “This is quite enough.  You don’t really want to be fighting alongside this mongrel, do you?” he said, with a vague nod in Prussia’s direction.  The albino bristled, but not as sharply as the elder twin.

“We’re _both_ Italy,” he growled, a whine humming in the back of his throat that made Austria wince in disgust. “ _Tell him_ , Feli!”

Veneziano nodded at his elder brother, but Austria could tell it was all the younger nation could do not to cow under his own intense violet gaze.  “W-we…” he began, uncertainly.

“Go on, kid, he can’t hurt you anymore,” Prussia sang out.  As if to prove it, he stepped behind Austria and held his arms back—more for show than anything else, Austria figured, but when he gave a preliminary attempt at struggling, he found the grip on him unbreakable.

“Unhand me at once,” he ordered, turning to meet red eyes just as sharp as his own, but Prussia dismissed him with a barking laugh.

“Go on!”

“We _will_ be one!” Veneziano exclaimed, in more of a squeak than a real voice, from behind his brother’s shoulder. “You can’t keep us apart anymore!”

“Italy,” he implored again, ignoring the incensed look Romano sent him, “did I not take care of you all these years since you began living with me?  Did I not ensure your protection?”

“A-ah, well…” Veneziano stumbled, unsure of what to say to this. “That…that’s true but—”

“Was part of protecting him selling his older brother into slavery to Spain?” inquired the voice close to his ear, ever so helpfully.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you even feel guilty about that?” Prussia asked, in a tone of mocking wonder.  Romano leaned forward, his features set at stony, furious angles.

Austria took a moment to consider the question, though he was unsure it warranted a response.  “Guilty…?  Why…no, not particularly.”  Austria glanced back at his captor, addressing him.  “Italy’s services were an asset to Holy Roman Empire’s house, though we could not afford to keep both of them.  Spain graciously took Romano off our hands.  It was the most expedient outcome for all involved; I fail to see how guilt plays a factor in—”

In Spain’s service, Romano had gained height and muscle, a strong tendency towards angry cynicism, and a mean right hook.  Finely shattering glass exploded in Austria’s face, missing his eyeballs but scraping against his forehead and temples as the blow landed and knocked the glasses from his nose.  The nearly empty frames fell to the earth and stuck a centimeter in; Austria sucked in breath at the blood and pain still throbbing in his abdomen, the dozens of stinging particles speckling his skin, and, worst of all, his disgust at what Spain had raised the boy on, for him to have learned such a thing.

“Lovi!”

Prussia had loosened his grasp in surprise, and Austria, with an air of calm, reached forward and plucked the empty frames from the ground before the other could regain his grip.  His eyesight had worsened gradually since he was a child, and a blurry world, populated with fuzzy blobs in the guise of people, greeted him now as he dusted off the empty, dark frames and placed them carefully in his breast pocket, ignoring the mud that clung to them.  The lenses were beyond repair, but at least these could be reused.

“Convenient!” snapped Romano, and Austria detected a hint of tears in his voice, though he could not see them. “For everyone except us!”

“You were a young, fractured nation,” he explained, as if the situation were no more serious or complex than a major scale on a page of music. “We take advantage of you until you can take care of yourself.  Just as Prussia is doing for you now.  That is how the world works.”

“Prussia’s _helping_ us,” insisted Veneziano.

“Prussia is helping you because it is convenient for him to do so.  Please do not harbor any illusions about this.”

“Our dear little aristocrat seems to think everyone carries out business in the same way he does,” Prussia interceded, reaching to grab a healthy handful of Austria’s thick dark hair to pull.  “Please do not delude yourself,” he hissed, continuing his mockery of the other nation’s speech.

“Regardless of what this lout may tell you,” Austria continued, attempting to remain unaffected, “he _is_ using you in some way.  At the very least, _I_ am being honest with you.”

“We never needed you or that bastard Spain or anyone to take care of us,” Romano snapped, and Austria attempted to shake his head, but Prussia’s grasp held firm.

“Of course you did,” he said, his voice holding a small mote of pity. “If we had not been there to make sure that you stayed out of harm’s way, you would have disappeared a long time ago, just like your grandfather.”

A sudden sound like thunder ripped through the battle-torn sky, but Austria found himself surprised that the noise had instead emitted from the mouth that normally spoke in dulcet tones about pastels and pastas.  Without warning, Veneziano launched himself on his former caretaker; Prussia stumbled back just in time as the younger Italy brother raised a skinny arm, topped by a bony, weak fist.

“Fe-Feliciano!” Romano exclaimed, more in shock than with any sort of alarm or condemnation.

“Don’t!” screamed Veneziano, all control over his voice lost. “Don’t you talk about Grandpa like that!  Don’t you _dare_!”

“Holy hell,” Prussia swore under his breath approvingly.  Veneziano’s fist had come down, pulled up, come down again, in quick succession, staining Austria’s cheek the deep red of impending bruises.

“That’s it, Feli!” Romano exclaimed, once he’d recovered, but if anything were prompting Veneziano’s attacks, it was his own rage, his own deep-seated, long-awaited thirst for vengeance.

“Grandpa was strong!  Grandpa was brave!”  This close to him, even through the blurriness of the world and the rain of blows against the left side of his face and neck, Austria could see Veneziano crying--sobbing--even as he spoke, even as he struck.  “Grandpa didn’t need someone like _you_ to take care of him,” he said, spitting even his indirect mention of Austria with great venom. “You coward!”  His voice by now had risen to a choked scream, to shatter the already-shattered sky.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Alright, alright,” Prussia soothed, suddenly appearing by Veneziano’s side, taking hold of his forearms. “Good job, but you should stop there.  We don’t wanna _kill_ him, Veneziano.”

“We don’t?” Romano echoed, though even he had to admit this wasn’t why he thought Prussia had stopped his little brother.  Even he could see that Veneziano’s attacks weren’t making much of a dent in even weak Austria’s stony façade.

“No, no.  Where’s the fun in it if he doesn’t suffer?” Prussia replied, his mouth twisting into a mean grin.

“Suffer?”  Romano seemed interested.

By now, Veneziano seemed to have calmed down and stood, nearly placated, by Prussia’s side.  But his eyes were still hard when he looked down at Austria, and none of the pity he might have felt before could yet permeate through the look he now gave the older nation.  It didn’t much matter, Austria figured; he couldn’t really see their faces from here, anyway.

“Sure.  Someone like our little master, here, he’s not bothered by what bothers everyone else.  ‘Cause he doesn’t really have emotions like the rest of us, see.”

What was Prussia  _getting at_? Austria wondered, feeling horror bubble in the pit of his stomach.  But he didn’t lower himself to speaking to him--to _any_ of them.

“So how do we get to him?” Romano asked, his voice greedy.  His younger brother remained silent, but his lack of protest was evident enough of his eagerness to go through with whatever scheme his old enemy had cooked up this time.

“Easy.”  Prussia strode forward and picked up one of Austria’s hands as if--and Austria had to fight down a sudden urge to giggle at this--he meant to propose.  “Same way you get to anyone.  Hit ‘em at their weak spot.”

“What would that be?” Veneziano piped up.

“Christ, Veneziano, you lived with him for how long, and you still don’t know?”  Prussia laughed jovially and cracked his knuckles around Austria’s own.  “Selfish fuckers like him, you’ve gotta break what matters to them the most.  Otherwise they’ll never learn not to cross you.”

In an opera, this would have been the moment when the clouds overhead parted, and the climax, the epiphany, would dawn on the rest of the characters.  Romano realized, and he emitted horrible laughter that he might have overheard from Spain at his most ruthless.  Veneziano realized, and suddenly this didn’t seem right anymore, and he let out a horrified gasp.  Austria realized, too, and the color escaped his face and broke his silence at last.

“P-Prussia!  Don’t!”  There was a sharp, panicked note to his voice that he simply couldn’t keep down.

“Oho?  Is that _begging_ I hear?” Prussia asked nastily, leaning in close so Austria could clearly see his sneer.

“Prussia, don’t do that! _Don’t_!”

“You see, boys?  What did I tell you?  If you want to get to someone like him--” and here Prussia made a snapping motion with his wrist, and Austria’s agonized screams echoed all across the fields “--you gotta break the only thing he cares about.”

“Prussia!!” screamed Austria, but even he could tell his attempts to sound threatening only resonated pathetically in his own ears.

_Crack!_   Prussia’s ministrations snapped another finger’s bone, bringing the agony back to the forefront of Austria’s lips.  Nothing from before, neither the bullet still lodged in his stomach nor the fury of the Italy brothers, could compare to this…

“Stop this at once!”  He could hear his voice falter and beg, and unbidden tears streamed down both cheeks, but Prussia’s horrible laughter drowned it all out.

_Crack!  Crack, crack!_   Before the blossoms of new pain could register in his mind, Austria found himself with a hand full of broken fingers.

Romano, who had been watching with a look of horrible fascination, watched Prussia pause to look closely at his handiwork, while Austria was all but paralyzed in pain at his feet.  “Are you doing the other one?  ‘Cause if not, I can—”

“W-wait, Lovi,” Veneziano murmured to his brother, hesitation riding him once more, “if you do that…his music…”

“Yes,” Austria managed to gasp through teeth gritted in pain, “you always liked my music, did you not, Italy?  You would sit there with me for hours and just li— _augh_!”

“You just don’t _shut up_ , do you, you stupid aristocrat?” Prussia snarled, now holding Austria’s right hand with two of its fingers already snapped. “I’ll make sure your screams are the only music you make for a good long time!”

Veneziano refused to watch as the rest of Austria’s fingers were rendered useless, but nor did he attempt to stop Prussia, choosing instead to bury his face in Romano’s shoulder.  Austria’s unbridled howls of pain felt as if they meant to stab through his eardrums, in sharp contrast to the way the older nation’s music used to soothe him, even after he’d grown up.  A wailing, rising cacophony soared, higher and higher, losing its brilliant, awful harmony in the shear chaos of that final moment when Prussia snapped his wrist, severing joints, bones--but he wasn’t done, no, for now he reached for the other side, sneaky fingers, _whole_ fingers, snaking their way around this wrist too, meaning to form a horrible symmetry in—

“PRUSSIA!”

The sound didn’t belong.  It was strong where Austria’s own wails were weak and desperate, righteous where Prussia was deviant, sure where the Italy twins scrambled for meaning.  It was off-beat. It was _female_.

She slid into their rhythm easily, wearing not the clothing of Austria’s men but a uniform of her own design, worn cloth and pieces of armor meshing into one fantastic fabric.  With a sweep of a gun-clenching hand, she cut off Prussia’s grip and sent him on the defensive, forcing the Italy brothers back even as she let Austria down gently upon the ground, pre-soaked in the rain and his own blood.  It mixed with the damp earth and stained his white uniform with dirty hands.

“The _hell_ did you come from?!” Prussia gasped, his face white enough to be translucent as she pushed between him and his prey.  But she didn’t engage him in wordplay; back, back she pushed him, striking him here, there, keeping close, ever threatening, shoving at his chest with the urgent muzzle of a point-blank pistol.

“Hands _off_!” she said, her voice a growl deep enough to be mistaken for a man’s.  And Prussia remembered, stupid, childhood conversations about her ridiculous preadolescent misconceptions, and it gave him the time he needed to recover.  Horror gave way to amusement on his face, even as she pressed the hungry mouth of the gun harder into his chest.

“What’s this, Hungary?” he sneered at her, even from his precarious position, “All that time you spent playing kitchen wench to this ungrateful rich bastard—do you still even remember how to fight?”

“I can still kick your ass, Prussia; don’t think I won’t!” she told him warningly, her face contorting into an ugly snarl Austria was glad he couldn’t see.

“I guess you’d have to be able to, or the stupid aristocrat wouldn’t keep you around.  That’s right!” he added, his voice rising, half-hysterical. “Where would the great Austrian Empire be now if it didn’t have _competent_ nations to take care of it?  Weren’t you just saying so, my little master?  _That’s how the world works!_ ”

Hungary struck him across the face with her pistol, sending blood and laughter streaming from his mouth.

“M-miss Hungary!—”

“And you!”  She turned, in a whirl of skirts and hair and armor, and focused green eyes on Veneziano, still clutching his older brother’s shoulder.  She saw him, and the vision before her swam and her eyes tricked her into seeing how he had looked as a child, when Austria used to scold him for doing something wrong—but no, he wasn’t a child anymore, she had to tell herself firmly.  Was he not now responsible for his own actions?  Wasn’t he?

“Don’t you yell at him!” Romano shot back, though Hungary knew he was just as terrified as his brother. “That bastard’s keeping us from being together again!”

She watched them both carefully through smoldering eyes, her anger wavering.  They weren’t children anymore, but they were still scared, still ignorant of their place in the grand scheme of this world, more so than most of them.  So Hungary could watch them, could look between the two as they drew what strength they could from each other, but the anger kept leaking out of her face, replaced by disappointment, frustration, pity.

There was nothing she could say to that, so she turned back to Prussia.

“You’re using them,” she accused, simply.

“ _He’s_ using _you_ ,” he retorted, grinning a nasty, bloody grin at her. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

“Mr. Austria’s place is not on the battlefield,” she told him, “Mine is.  He isn’t _using_ me; I _choose_ to defend him.”  She had never felt or sounded surer of anything in her long, long life.  “For all he’s done for me,” she added, with the quickest of glances back at Veneziano, “it’s the least I can do in return.”

Prussia snorted—coughed up more blood, but didn’t lose his toothy red grin.  No, he pressed it as close as he knew she would allow, and on him she smelled earth—rain-soaked earth and blood-soaked earth, the earth of the battlefield and the earth of the grave, and the earth of a disputed, invaded land.  “Bull _shit_.  I don’t care _why_ you’re doing this, that goddamn aristocrat has you tied around his little finger like a damned _slave_ , Hungary!  What happened to you in that house, anyway?  You used to have _pride_!  Then you spend a couple centuries with him and turn into a fucking _maid_ —”

With a cry of rage, Hungary shot him in the thigh, the shoulder, belted him again on the top of his head, and would have kept going but for the flat, pained call from behind her:

“Miss Hungary!”

She stopped, a furious, shaking fist clenched around the collar of his shirt still, and turned back to look at Austria.  His head was raised a little off the ground, his face pale and blank and unreadable.

“That is enough.”

“But I can still—” she protested.

“They’ve won.  It’s over.”

She dropped Prussia, and suddenly without support he fell to the earth.  Giving him not a glance, Hungary she retreated back to where she had left the white-clad nation on his back, staring up at the gray clouds above.  His eyes had lost their luster and would not look at her.  “Don’t be so quick to give up, Mr. Austria,” she urged him.

“No.  I know when my people have lost.”  This close, now, she could see the difficulty with which he had to speak.  “We will go home, now.”

“But—”

“We will go home now,” he repeated, his eyes blinking, unseeing, at the sky.

Behind her, the Italy brothers were gathering up Prussia to help him back to his men, but she missed the quiet look Veneziano gave her back as they left, the three of them walking slowly away on bleeding soil.

Attempting to keep the grief from her face, Hungary quickly gave Austria’s injuries what attention she could out here, then carefully lifted him up and took him back to his people.  She said not a word about his blood as it soaked through the front of her clothing.  He, too, was silent the entire way.

When they arrived back at Austria’s house, they found a particular wall torn down, but crudely, and inside that ruined room was his pride and joy, his piano, torn to kindling without a thought.  But he said not a word, shed not a tear, and when Hungary inquired softly about it later, while splinting his wrist, his fingers, all he would tell her was, “It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter.”


End file.
